


Learning to Sing

by DOA



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drabble, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Side Story: Garden of Light, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 02:47:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17357492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DOA/pseuds/DOA
Summary: Eiji is smart.Maybe not Ash level smart, or even Yut-Lung or Sing, but he’s smart. He knows he’s at least average, if not above. He just never much liked the academic path, choosing to learn about cooking, plants, photography. Things that made him feel alive.He never realizes that he’s taken up a new course until he’s done  it.Learning Sing is no different.





	Learning to Sing

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short drabble. Decided to start posting my one-shots on here.

Eiji is smart.

  

Maybe not Ash level smart, or even Yut-Lung or Sing, but he’s smart. He knows he’s at least average, if not above. He just never much liked the academic path, choosing to learn about cooking, plants, photography. Things that made him feel alive.

 

He never realizes that he’s taken up a new course until he’s done it. Never thought he had a green thumb until he had a wall with vines stretching across it and a tea garden on his roof. 

 

Learning Sing is no different. It had started with a review; what he already knew. Sing liked a lot of the food Eiji did. The stuff that Shorter used to cook, but couldn’t cook well. He slowly learned that Sing liked pastrami from the deli down the road, pineapple on his pizza, and hot sauce on eggs, which Eiji didn’t understand, but took note of at the grocery store, adding a bottle of the stuff to the cart with a disgusted face while Sing grabbed the milk.

 

Then he reached the next chapter, expanding on his knowledge. He learned that Sing liked tea, but also liked coffee. Preferred coffee when he had school, and tea on his days relaxing. Sing also liked lilacs; would always stop and smell them when they walked Buddy through Central Park. It was the first time Eiji had ever noted something Sing did as cute, but when the boy-turned-man smiled happily at the bush, Eiji almost always found himself snapping a picture with a grin of his own. 

 

He learned that Sing studied like Ash. Quietly, as if unable to acknowledge the world around him. But there was a difference, and it was the way they breathed. Ash had held his breath, as if waiting for a fact that would steal it completely or give him a sigh of relief. Sing had even breaths, as if studying brought him peace; brought him hope.

 

Eiji didn’t like to compare the two men, but he found himself smiling whenever Sing studied with Buddy lying across his feet, slowly finding his own peace.

 

Then there was what he didn’t know. Things he didn’t _know_ he didn’t know. It started when Sing took the spare room one night only for Eiji to shake him awake after noting the screams. Sing shakes when he’s calming down, and doesn’t like to be held. He likes to hold Eiji instead, a hand pressed against his back, on the left side, and Eiji’s beating heart always shatters a bit.

 

He learned that Sing doesn’t wear a shirt in the morning; an old tradition taught by Shorter. Eiji takes a few pictures of that now, Sing with no shirt and a cup of tea, a lazy smirk and sleepy eyes, and the picture feels like a final exam, a passing grade. He’s happy he took it on the shitty Polaroid that Sing had found for him at a thrift store, only to bring it home with a blush and a poor excuse of “yeah, I saw it and thought of you” as if someone can just stumble across a working instant camera.

 

Because he looks at it and realizes that he’s learned who Sing is. Learned his body, heart, and soul. The boy he used to be to the man he is now; on break from school at Harvard and coming to Eiji’s apartment like it’s coming home.

 

So when Sing settles at the table, asking for the stock section of the paper, Eiji doesn’t mind feeling bold as he walks over to Sing, said section in his hand, and sitting in his lap. Sing blushes as his hands instinctually find Eiji’s waist and he leans in so they’re noses are brushing.

 

“I love you.” Eiji whispers quietly, casually, as if it’s not the first time, and Sing’s sweet smile reflects the same.

 

“I love you too.”

 

Because while Eiji learned, so did Sing.

 

 

 


End file.
